Systematic Chaos
by figliedellatempesta
Summary: Not-at-all-canon Avengers-based one shot.  The Avengers defeat Loki: Stark wants to  finish him off, but Thor is unable to resign himself to his brother's death.


A short and shit one-shot because I'm Loki-obsessed and killing time until the Avengers movie is released (22 days...). I've only really included Tony and Thor because I'm not especially a fan of the other Avengers, I just have a bit of a Tony-shaped soft spot along with a massive Loki addiction. Not canon in any way, and not in any way any good either, I just have to quell my Loki angst urges somehow ;)

Based on the idea that the Avengers defeat Loki by trapping him in a building and blowing it up. Tony wants to finish Loki off, but Thor finds it difficult to consign his brother to that fate.

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><p>The God of Mischief let out a soft, defeated groan. He opened his eyes, squinting against the brightness of the world around him and surveyed the scene of destruction. Loki was lying on his back, on broken concrete that had once been the 6th floor of a large skyscraper. Or possibly the fifth floor. There was really no way to tell what was what in the mass of shattered glass, mangled metal, imploded furniture and crumbling concrete and stone that had apparently once been a building.<p>

It was clever, really, how they had got him. They master of trickery had been well and truly tricked by the Avengers, of all people. He had known, at heart, of course he had, that they, especially Thor, would not let him take over Midgard, or Earth, or whatever it was that people called it. All he'd wanted was a little adoration, the power and status of having his own little corner of the cosmos to rule, since his attempt at ruling Asgard was of the past. He'd known though, that it wouldn't succeed. There was no way his blonde, oafish, do-good brother would have let him take over such a large and widely populated planet. Perhaps, after all, he had wanted the plan to fail. Perhaps he had wanted to taunt a reaction out of Thor. Perhaps. But nonetheless, he did not take kindly to being tricked. Using the injured Black Widow as bait had been a smart move, but one he should have been more wary of. The chance to personally take out an Avenger was too much to pass up on, but if he'd had his wits about him, he'd have sensed the explosives, the ticking time bomb waiting to go off, folding the building around him like a house of cards.

He felt as if his spine had cracked into three pieces. He cast his eyes quickly downwards to investigate whether or not he still had his limbs – he wouldn't have been especially surprised to see one of them lying in the dust at the other end of what might have been a room, but they were all still attached, albeit at odd angles. One of his horns had broken off and been lost under rubble. Every inch of his miserable body ached and burned, and his breath came in horrible shallow gasps that he hated to acknowledge were coming from his body. Loki grit his teeth and left out a pained, bitter laugh. This was presumably it. He'd die in a big pile of rubble in a miserable mortal world; Thor would go back to Asgard and not one person would mourn him. He tried to sit up. Pain shot down his back like an electrical current, branching out and attacking his limbs, spreading through every inch of his broken body like white hot lightning. Panting, he sank back down to the floor, sweat trickling down his forehead underneath what remained of his bent and battered helmet. What a way to die, he thought to himself.

It was a pretty humiliating end for the God of Mischief; or it would have been. His eyes slid shut and his breathing slowed as he resigned himself to the inevitable. His consciousness began to ebb as he allowed himself to sink into obscurity. Until he felt an almighty kick in the side of his ribs. His eyes popped open in shock as he pulled away, coughing heavily. He wasn't sure whether his ribs had been broken before, but they certainly were now. His eyes just about managed to focus on the rugged face of one Tony Stark, fully dressed in his Iron Man regalia. Oh God, Loki groaned under his breath. And here he had been thinking they'd let him go relatively quietly. Stark aimed another titanium-booted kick at the same spot on Loki's damaged ribcage, leaving him rolled over onto his side choking up mouthfuls of blood.

"Piece of shit," Tony spat, uncharacteristically aggressively. He wasn't known for being foul mouthed or unnecessarily cruel, but given the trouble Loki had just put them to…

Loki narrowed his eyes and squinted up at who might just have been his least favourite Avenger. Or second least favourite after his god damn brother. Or his damn god brother. Or something. He was a god too, mind you, although it was rarely acknowledged, he mused to himself.

"A pleasure, as usual, Mr Stark," he said in what had been intended to be a casually witty, sarcastic rejoinder, although with bleeding lungs and a throat full of concrete dust it came out as a rather pathetic croak.

Stark merely glared at him in disgust. "You…" he started, choking back the foul-mouthed tirade that threatened to spill from his lips.

Loki tried again to sit up, but found Tony's boot at his throat. He grimaced and spluttered, trying to suck air into his shredded lungs through his constricted windpipe. His face turned mildly purple and he let out a horrible moaning noise as he struggled to push the Iron Man off him. Even injured, Loki would probably have been able to push Tony Stark off him, but the Iron Man was another question.

It was at this moment that, predictably but rather more welcome than usual given the situation, the Nordic Thunder God, Thor, ran over to the scene. "Loki…" he gasped. Loki barely had the wherewithal to acknowledge his brother's presence, given the way Tony was occasionally allowing him to gasp for enough air to stay alive before reapplying the boot-pressure with a vengeance. Quite apart from being painful, it was incredibly humiliating.

"Tony… what…?" Thor muttered, even more ineloquent than usual. "Don't…" he began before trailing off. He knew his brother was his enemy, knew that they had endured this whole battle because of him, but nonetheless seeing his brother lying on the floor in a crumpled heap with the Iron Man's foot on his throat made his stomach twist. His brother could be utterly poisonous, and probably had no remorse at all, but Thor couldn't quite remove the slender dark haired god from the image he had of him as a child, growing up together in Asgard. He couldn't quite believe that Loki was evil through and through. Misguided, malicious, power-hungry, mischievous to the point of destroying himself and everything around him, but not outright evil. He had to be stopped, but he didn't have to be tortured any more than was necessary. "Tony, leave him be," he finally managed.

Stark looked up at Thor as if seeing him for the first time.

"You want me to leave this piece of shit alive?" he snarled in disbelief. "After all that he's done?"

"He… he's my brother…" Thor muttered lamely. He could barely rationalise his aversion to seeing Loki killed to himself, let alone to anyone else, but there it was, nonetheless.

Tony groaned and removed his foot from Loki's throat. Pink-cheeked and sweating, Loki pulled away, massaging his throat with the less injured of his two hands. Taking advantage of the other two men's momentary distraction, he attempted to crawl a few feet away from the angry Avenger, only for Tony's boot to come back down on his left arm, crunching the bones audibly. Loki let out an agonised scream and collapsed onto the floor shivering violently.

Thor ran instinctively to his brother's side and pulled the seething Iron Man away from him. Tony shot Thor an accusatory look. "Don't expect me to turn my back and let this little creep stab us all in the back."

"I know," Thor mumbled, guiltily. "Look, I'll deal with him, ok? He's badly hurt; he won't be able to cause much harm in a state like this."

Tony gave a doubtful snort and fixed his glare on the shivering god on the floor. "If you so much as try anything, I'll blow your head off," he threatened.

"Five minutes," Thor pleaded with his colleague.

"Fine," Stark replied drily, taking a few steps away from the other two, but not taking his eyes off Loki.

Thor knelt next to his step brother and surveyed his injuries. They were pretty bad, although not enough to kill a god, most likely. His left leg was bent out of shape, he was bleeding in countless places, his face was badly bruised and cut, he was covered in dust and dirt and his helmet was partially caved in on one side. Thor bent forwards and removed the horned helmet gently, although not gently enough as his brother writhed and whimpered as he did so, digging his nails into the crumbled ground. Thor's stomach turned a little as he realised that Loki's skull had caved in along with the helmet, and blood was rapidly trickling down his pale face as skin came away with the metal.

"Is it bad?" Loki muttered, sounding rather uncharacteristically plaintive.

"Uh…"

Loki blinked pathetically. Thor knew he should be angry, should be considering letting Stark finish the job, or at least taking Loki back to Asgard for the worst punishment Odin could come up with, but he couldn't help feeling sorry for his younger sibling.

"It's ok. I mean, it's bad, but you'll be ok."

Loki's mouth twisted into something between a grimace and a smile and he let out a dry laugh. "I bet you're loving this," he hissed.

"How can you say that? After everything you've done, you deserve this pain and more, Loki. You don't deserve me to spare your life."

"Why don't you finish this then? Why don't you finish me off while you can?"

Thor grimaced. There was some logic in Loki's words, although knowing his brother he was trying to manipulate him with them.

"It's not my place to decide on your punishment," he replied. "I'll take you back to Asgard. Father will decide on your fate."

A genuine look of fear entered Loki's eyes for a second. He couldn't stand the thought of the humiliation of being dragged back to Asgard, a crumpled and defeated wreck, to be scorned and despised by the whole realm; the disappointed, disgusted look on his father's face; being sentenced to some degrading punishment.

"Typical," he spat. "You don't even have the guts to finish what you've started. At least I saw this through to the end. Maybe in the end you won, much as it pains me to say it, but you could at least have the decency to let me die a quick death now rather than keep on punishing me forever."

Thor sighed and shook his head. However by this point Loki was starting to drift back out of consciousness, his hand going automatically to the damaged portion of his skull, whimpering like an injured animal as he felt the shattered bone beneath his fingers.

"Five minutes is up," Tony cut in from across the room, having removed his armour and standing against the wall looking tired and irritable, giving Loki another suspicious glance as if he thought that the whole thing was an act and the God of Mischief was about to get up and shoot magic at them all. However, from the way Loki was shivering and gasping, his face white and sweat-drenched, it didn't seem like it was an act. Not that Stark felt even the slightest tinge of sympathy for the badly injured god. In fact, he was quite tempted to kick him again and keep kicking him until he was dead, although that didn't seem like a particularly tasteful way to finish off anyone, even an enemy.

"I'm gonna take him back to Asgard," Thor stated. "My father will deal with him. He'll be kept under full surveillance and kept under control until we have decided how best to punish him. You can trust that he will be given a trial according to the ways of our people, and that he will be given a punishment befitting his crimes."

"Huh. So I'm guessing you're not gonna let me blow a hole in his face then?"

Thor shook his head. "It's just not right. He is to be given a fair trial and a fair punishment, no matter how grave the crimes he has committed."

Stark ran a hand through his filthy brown hair. "Fine. You just make sure you keep him locked up or whatever. I won't be getting involved if he suddenly decides to take another shot at world domination."

"You can be assured that he won't try anything like this again," Thor replied.

"You'd better be right."


End file.
